Heavy industrial and commercial equipment like forklifts, air compressors, robots, and inventory systems rotating equipment are commonly combined with “monitoring” devices which allow a user to track important information about the equipment. These systems may consist of one more external monitoring devices that operate under a connection to equipment and are installed onto equipment, and devices which are built directly into the equipment when the equipment is manufactured.
These systems are used for tracking utilization and important activities related to equipment so that service professionals and facilities managers can plan for maintenance and optimization of equipment. The end goal of these monitoring devices is for the entire facility to operate more efficiently.
For example, a forklift may have a device installed after-market or built into the machinery which will communicate “hours” that the forklift runs. A service company or the owner of the vehicle may be able to tap into this data remotely to correctly determine when service of the vehicle is needed without having to physically inspect the vehicle.
In another example, mobile tablets connected or resting on equipment can be used in a situation where equipment must be inspected before use. For example, a worker may have to physically inspect an environment to assure safety standards are met before or during operation. In this example, a worker may need to physically inspect a mass of a forklift to make sure there are no cracks, check a box on a computer program (tablet) or paper-clipboard.
In another example, when a part fails, needs repair, or is worn down a user must physically open up a piece of equipment to determine what part needs repair or rely on obscure error codes from diagnostics, which usually obtain their information from broken connections rather from the physics of the parts themselves.
These methods are insufficient because they require installation, are manual in nature (e.g., tracking info on a tablet), and/or do not provide enough information because of the methods in which they are tracked.
Examples of these insufficiencies include the installation of monitoring device on a forklift. Installing such a device after-market or during manufacturing takes technician time and installation procedures can vary from forklift brand to forklift brand. Additionally, different devices are needed for different types of equipment. For example, a device that monitors a forklift may not have the ability to monitor another machine, such as an air compressor.
Another inefficiency is the potential lack of details available to these devices. For example, a forklift monitoring device may transmit “hours”, but may not be able to differentiate activity “driving” versus “lifting”, for example, which is important to end users.
Yet another inefficiency is when new equipment, materials or personnel are brought into a facility (e.g., service professionals or equipment that is being rented), should they include monitoring devices, they will not necessarily be linked to the facility's data system.
Yet another inefficiency is the ability of monitoring devices to take into account environmental factors such as the general “sound” of equipment. For example, workers are instructed to “listen” for irregular sounds emitting from equipment as a potential alert that something is or is about to malfunction.
In another example, in safety inspections, a worker may need to physically check that there is no oil spill, that wheels are full of air, etc. After checking, the worker may manually enter in on a tablet attached (or not attached) to a forklift that the safety inspection was complete.